


The Endless Dream

by Jastra



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game), SCP - Containment Breach, SCP Foundation
Genre: Bad Ending, Blood Sharing, Blood and Violence, Captivity, Dark, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Gender neutral style, Horror, Kidnapping, Medical Procedures, Multi, Possessive Behavior, The Hunter's Dream (Bloodborne), bloodborne au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:20:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29274585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jastra/pseuds/Jastra
Summary: You had signed the contract to become a hunter the moment you had arrived in Yharnam, ready to hunt down blood hungry beasts during the night of the hunt in exchange for blood healing.As you dream your way through Yharnam's night, you come across another visitor to the city; a plague doctor who seeks to cure a disease more horrifying than the beastly scourge plaguing the city. Unfortunately for you, the doctor quickly becomes interested in your talents.Soon enough a completely new nightmare unfurls around you.
Relationships: SCP-049 (SCP Foundation)/Reader
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	The Endless Dream

**Author's Note:**

> SCP-049 doesn't really try to cure anything.

”A-Are you the d-doctor? Where's my mum?”

You stop by a window of one of the countless houses of central Yharnam when you hear a small and scared voice inside addressing you.

”A doctor?” You ask in a gentle and genuinely concerned voice despite holding an open saw cleaver in one hand, the jagged blade still dripping with the blood of recently slaughtered beasts.

You wished no harm for the people hiding within their homes and you'd do your all to protect them during this horrendous night of hunt. You hear small steps shuffling closer to the window, the soft pink light that seeped through the blood red curtains growing stronger as the lamp neared the dirty iron barred window.

”Oh, s-sorry. I thought you to be someone else.” The voice belonged to a girl who sounded both scared and disappointed, for you had not been the person they had awaited for.

”Have you lost your mother, child? Are you all alone in there? And on a night like this of all nights....” you inquire and the small girl sniffles a bit. You can't see her face due to the curtains, but she sounded very young.

”M-mum went with the doctor in black. Said he could help her he did. Rid her of the pestilence. But my mum's not sick.” the polite child told you. “I told her not to go, not to leave me!” the lonesome child told you, sounding both upset and terrified.

 _Is there a doctor roaming these streets during a night of the hunt? y_ ou wonder as you gaze up at the setting sun that hanged large and heavy over Yharnam. The last rays of the dying day painted the city and its Gothic spires that reached up towards the heavens in red and orange. Your shadow grew slowly but surely longer and darker, reminding you that there was a long and lonely night ahead of you.

Isefka's clinic was already locked tight with no one let in or out. Was there really a doctor out there braving the streets of Yharnam to help its citizen? It so, such an act was to be commended.

”Mum promised she'd be right back...but she's been gone for hours now...I think. S-should I go look for her?”

Your gaze snaps back to the window when you hear such a foolish thought escape the girl's lips.

”No, stay inside and do not open the door...only beasts roam these streets tonight, understand?” you tell the girl. ”If I see your mother, I'll be sure to bring her to you. I promise.”

”Oh ok...thank you kind hunter. I'll do as you say and wait for my mum to return.”

You wished you could have done more for the young girl, but the hunt had to take priority. The night seemed endless, the daybreak so very far away.

Time passed and the Cleric Beast fell quickly to your weapon and wit, beast slaughtered with as much mercy as you could, after all these monsters had once been human. Alas, a quick death was all you could offer to these scourge afflicted wretches.

The Hunter's Dream had called you many times now, though the line between that dream and the waking world started to feel blurry now. It felt like Yharnam itself was but another layer of the dream with you treading the same paths and enemies over and over again, repeating a portion of a dream until it moved forward.

You found yourself inquiring about the doctor from other Yharnamites who refused to open their doors or windows to you. The pious and scared people of Yharnam would hold out the night inside their locked doors and iron barred windows, hoping incense, prayer and hunters would keep the beasts away. You were an outsider and thus they trusted you even less.

” _They say that a doctor walks the streets, seeking to cure this affliction. Can you believe that? I say he is a madman,”_ said one woman.

” _I'll tell ya, the only cure for this scourge is a quicksilver bullet through the beasts' skull,”_ told you another.

” _Said we were sick he did. But there's no sickness in here, no sickness at all.”_

The cough that followed had suggested otherwise.

” _I am not opening my door to anyone tonight. Not a cleric or a hunter and certainly not a doctor of any kind, especially one who has exposed himself to the scourge.”_

People were deathly afraid and for a good reason. This night was like no other.

The late evening would soon turn into a night...or so you had thought. The minutes and seconds seemed to stretch out, feeling way longer than they supposed to.

The hands of the clock refused to move forward, the passage of time coming almost to a halt you and the monsters moving about.

As you walk through the maze like streets of Yharnam, you start to notice single dead bodies here and there. Corpses in themselves were nothing new to you, and would have been beneath your notice by now, but the fact how fresh kills they were and how they formed a trail towards a plaza with a fountain caught your attention.

Huntsmen, beasts and werewolves alike lied on the street and against the buildings with, throats cut open and body parts dismembered. The already coagulated blood had painted the cobbled streets dark red . This was not your work, nor of anyone you knew. With your hunter's blunderbuss in one hand and saw cleaver in the other you follow the trail of bodies that leads to a large fountain. The statues on the marble fountain depicted praying and weeping women much like all art of Yharnam did. The city was very pious, their faith in blood healing and the old gods unwavering.

”This pestilence...it is everywhere, it contaminates everything...” you hear a soft voice and the sound of something sharp being stabbed repeatedly into tough flesh coming from behind the fountain. "This city is sick...I have to purge it...there is so much to do, so very much indeed.”

Your steps halt for a moment as you take few seconds to prepare your self, only to quickly circle around the large fountain, ready to strike down whatever deranged citizen or beast lied in wait.

However, you do not raise your saw cleaver when you see who was behind the fountain. You find yourself staring at the tall man wearing a black plague doctor's garb along with the white bird like mask that came with the trade...though for some reason it did not look quite right. The man was knelt by a corpse of a huntsman who had succumbed to the scourge, performing a rather brutal autopsy on the toughened flesh, the scalpel digging into the man's innards again and again.

 _Eileen?_ You think for a second, but quickly realize that this person was not the hunter of hunters, but someone else entirely.

You grimace a bit when the man pulls out the scalpel, vile blood splashing from the wound onto his black leather robes and white mask, yet he does not seem to mind or even notice, but upon sensing you standing some distance behind him, the stranger's hand stops in mid cut. The plague doctor slowly turns his gaze to look at you and you can't help the cold shiver of dread running down your spine.

The man's white plague doctor mask was covered in fresh and dried blood and the cold grey eyes behind it were fixated on you, as if peering into your very soul and through it.

You watch with your muscles tensed up, ready to jump into attack any second, as the man slowly stands up to his full height. He was easily two heads taller than you.  
”My, my, and here I thought I braved these streets alone,” the stranger said in very polite and calm manner as he turned fully to you, showing no sign of hostility whatsoever. If anything he seemed pleased to find another soul.

Upon closer inspection you could confirm his black leather garb really was that of a plague doctor and though his appearance reminded you of Eileen the Crow, you could see that his outfit was not of Yharnam design. In his hand was a doctor's cane, although the design and build looked closer to that of the threaded cane.

 _Is this the doctor that girl talked about?_ You wonder, saw cleaver still ready to cut the man in twine should he turn hostile. A wise decision, after all he had left behind quite the trail of corpses. _Strange, I was not aware plague doctors still existed in the world._

”A hunter are you?” the man asked in a soft and gentle tone, taking a closer look at you. ”And an outsider like I no less, I can tell...Wonders abound...” The stranger mused to himself as he studied you curiously, tapping his mask lightly as he pondered your motives and intentions. “Here to seek the old blood, are you?” the man inquired, only to continue before you had a chance to reply. “Believe me when I say that the blood cures nothing. Only I can offer healing and cleansing for this cursed city.”

”You seek to cure this beastly scourge?” you inquire, finally able to relax a bit. It was a noble cause.

”The scourge? Why...yes it is quite the affliction for certain, but there is something much worse eating away at the good people of Yharnam. A vile sickness more foul than anything else in the existence. I seek to eradicate this sickness...this...this _**pestilence**_ from Yharnam and thus free her people from its shadow. I have no time nor interest in tending to a measly scourge caused by man's own carelessness and thirst for old blood.”

“How long have you been to Yharnam? You've picked quite the night to do your rounds..."

"A new arrival, such as yourself I presume. You lack the reek of this blood addicted city," the plague doctor explained. "This sickness I seek cares little whether it is a night of a hunt or not, and thus nor shall I."

”You've left quite the trail of bodies behind," you mention and point to the corpse by the doctor's feet with your saw cleaver. He does not even bother to look at it, for his attention was solely on you. It was rather unnerving to be completely honest. It felt like those cold grey eyes were studying more than just your physical presence in the world.

“Yes well, unfortunately death is the only true release from this ailment right now. But I am very close to a cure, I am certain of it...there is just so much more to learn; from both the living and the dead. It is a cruel fate to endure this sickness and the greatest mercy I can give is swift release from its grip.” the doctor said a bit remorsefully now. "Containment is what I aim for right now."

“Are you certain you are not a hunter?”  
The plague doctor shook his head, his soft and low chuckle rather eerie.

“Goodness no. I am a man of science who wishes nothing but good for everyone, even if I've had to rely on," the doctor paused, looking for the right word. " _crude_ methods tonight in order to free this city of the pestilence.”

You can't shake off the feeling that there was something very off about the plague doctor. His clothes did not look like any you had ever seen...it was like that mask and black robes were part of him.

“And here I was afraid for your safety. Are you sure you'd not seek shelter amongst others who reside at the cathedral ward? The Oedon chapel offers sanctuary.”

”I assure you your concern is misplaced,” the man replied rather coldly as he picked up his doctor's bag, ready to leave and look for the sickness elsewhere in Yharnam. “But I shall keep your words in my mind should I come across this chapel. Perhaps I can do some good there. This sickness I seek...it can be most insidious, spreading in those unaware of the affliction until it is all too late for them. “

The unnerving feeling in your heart grows as the doctor stares you for a moment longer, his grey eyes half lidded behind his mask as he ponders questions you could not possibly fathom in your current state. He sighs and shakes his head a bit, sounding almost relieved. “It seems like you've been fortunate enough not to have caught the affliction. How very fortunate. “  
“Most fortunate indeed. I guess.” you mutter, ucertain what to make of the man.

”I must take my leave now. There is still so much to do, so many patients to seek out and tend to. I will see to it that this epidemic will be contained and purged. You have my word. “

The plague doctor shifted his gaze up to the setting sun that watched over the blood starved city. It looked ominous and foreboding, almost malevolent. He lifted his hands elegantly up towards the sun, as if praising the last few rays of the dying day, welcoming the night.

”But thankfully the night is still young. There are still so many dreams to dream before the morning, should it ever come.” With that, the doctor started walking towards you, the weight and sound of his metal cane hitting against the cobbled street confirming you that it was indeed a threaded cane.

”One more thing, doctor," you ask quickly before he can disappear into the night. "A girl was looking for her mother that had gone with you? Pray tell me where she is,” you ask.

The doctor stands still for a moment, his back turned to you. The silence between you two lasted only few seconds, but those seconds felt all too long and you feared the worst.

”Oh her....I lost track of her earlier. No matter. I'm sure my path will cross hers again, eventually,” the plague doctor finally whispered in rather vexed manner.

 _What?_ You ask in your mind. But decide not to press the issue, perhaps they had merely been separated by some blood hungry beast. This night had taken so many lives already and you weren't going to blame the doctor. It could not be easy for him either. He could have just misjudged the dangers on night of the hunt.

”Mayhap we shall meet again this night, hunter. I shall leave you to your dreams now.”

With that, the eerie plague doctor disappeared into the labyrinth of narrow alleyways to do his work. Even though the man was odd, it warmed your heart to know there was someone looking out for the people of Yharnam.

* * *

The night continued even if time still seemed to slow down.

This all started to feel like a repeating nightmare where you tread the same tracks over and over again, returning to the hunter's dream when you fell, only to wake up anew in the waking world to try again...and again...and again. It was all very disorienting. Was Yharnam part of your dream as well? This all certainly felt like one bad dream that had no end. It seemed to move forward only when fell a great beast.

You had ventured beyond the Oedon Chapel, the hulking church doctors completely different from the foreign doctor you had met.

 _Wait, isn't that...?_ You stop to think when you see the familiar plague doctor in the distance among the cathedral ward's many graves, gaze lifted up to the spires of the cathedral and he seemed to be pondering on something.

His gaze snaps quickly to you when he notices you approaching him from among the countless gravestones.

"Our paths cross again this night, good hunter,” The plague doctor greeted you politely by bowing his head slightly, only to hesitate a bit as if not quite believing his own eyes when observing you.

”Why, isn't this peculiar. And here I thought I saw you fall to that hunter turned beast at the graveyard...or have these eyes of mine deceived me? the strange doctor in black murmured, pondering the answer with closed eyes. **“** But I remember...I do remember it indeed.”

For some odd reason you had a feeling you had come across him more than once already, but you could not quite remember those meetings...like you had dreamed of him many times, but those dreams had faded away as you had woken up into a new yet continuous night in Yharnam.

After few seconds of pondering the doctor sighed, having reached his conclusion.

”No, I trust my eyes to show me the world as it truly is. We are dreaming the same dream, you and I. It is layered, folded on top of one another and entwined, not knowing where it begins and where it ends,” he mused. "You've dreamt many dreams. And so have I.”

You had only now started to slowly learn the truth about the city and the plague doctor seemed to know a lot more than he initially let on. Just what did he know of the truth that was hidden from your eyes? Was he aware of the hunter's dream that you seemed to be bound to?

Still, he seemed sane enough...slightly unhinged yes, but then again who wasn't on a night like this when the line between man and beast became blurred.

"How does your search for the sickness proceed? Pestilence you called it?" you inquire as you approach the doctor who seemed truly delighted by your inquiry about his work, despite how grave of a matter it was.

"My, such welcome curiosity towards my trade. It has spread its tendrils further and deeper into Yharnam than I had anticipated. I'll have to work hard to eradicate it from this city. Thankfully there is still night to go, alas there is only so much I can do alone.”

You can't help but feel like the doctor was enjoying the night and did not wish to see it end.

“Have you come across anyone I've sent to the chapel? I fear something may have happened to them, for not a single one has found their way there.”

“No, all those I've come across have been sick. I've been most merciful when tending to those afflicted. Though there is only so much I can do.."

The plague doctor stayed silent for a moment, considering his words before finally speaking up his mind.

"Perhaps when this night is over you'd interested in becoming my apprentice? I've seen you cut down the sickness most effectively. Harsh as it may be, death is the only release from it's suffocating and vile grip. But there is much we could learn together of this affliction, this pestilence. I've been looking for a capable companion."

"A doctor's trade?" you chuckle as you close your saw cleaver. “I came here to seek the old blood healing , so I guess a hunter I shall remain.”  
The plague doctor tilted his head slightly to the side, curious. “Really now? You seek that poison to cure an illness that has no meaning? Trading one sickness for another?" he asked, tone one of disbelief and slight mockery. He clearly did not seem to think too highly of you looking for the healing blood of Yharnam. "Count your blessings for you've yet to be touched by the pestilence. Not even old blood can hold it back. Believe me you'd be able to do lot more good as my apprentice rather than a hunter. The road of a doctor is a long and lonely one. I'd welcome companionship."

"Well I shall take it into consideration. Alas, the night is still long and the hunt must go on."

The plague doctor's gaze returns yet again to the spires above the chapel and for a fleeting moment he just stands there, looking at them. However as you are bout to turn to take your leave to continue your way towards Hemwick Lane, the plague doctor asks you

"....Do you see them?"

His voice was barely more than a whisper, and you try to see what had him so enraptured, only to see nothing special up at the roofs.

“The spires? The setting sun is rather ominous above it,” you reply, unsure what the doctor in white bird mask had meant.

He remained silent, as if your answer had told him more than enough.

“Your eyes are yet to open.”

* * *

After what had felt like an eternity to you, the night proceeded and the silvery moon finally overtook the sky as darkness enveloped the land. You had cut down Vicar Amelia after venturing deep into Old Yharnam. Now you had returned once more to the streets, seeking answers to the many questions still lingering in your mind. You'd find out the truth behind this night's mysteries.

You stop and blink in confusion, scarcely believing your eyes when you see a woman running through the streets across you in utter panic. Her clothes were soaked in dark red blood and she was holding her side, trying to either keep her innards or blood inside. You rush to her when she collapses onto the street. Her blood would draw in all the beasts in the area for certain. You had to get her to safety fast.

”Are you ok!? What happened? Is there a beast after you?” you ask her, as you pull out one of your blood vials, ready to give it to her despite knowing the source of the beastly scourge. She is in shock, tears running down her face.

”Please hunter. Don't let him kill me, I beg of you. I am not sick. I am not...I swear by the blood I am not.”

You tense up when you hear steps behind you, the weight of the threaded cane that tapped against the cobbled street raising the hair on the back of your neck. Despite having slain so many beasts, the fellow foreigner you had come across few times during this fateful night still left you unnerved. He did not seem human. He was not a beast that was for certain...but something else. Did he have a face behind that mask? Was the mask lined with eyes?

”My my, if it isn't the good hunter. Fate seems eager to bring us together this night,” the doctor in black garb mused as he stopped some distance away from you. "A sign perhaps of our fates being woven together.”

Your eyes narrow a bit, the distance between you two was about the reach of the threaded cane's whip. Well it was a safe to keep one's distance, after all the hunters and clerics both proved to become the most heinous of beasts and considering the woman was deathly afraid of this man you suspected the doctors indeed shared the same fate. Had he become blood drunk like so many others?

“But wait...didn't I...” he wondered out loud, uncertainty evident in his voice as he gazed at his doctor's cane, turning it in his hand as if trying to find the blood splatter or dent killing you had left there, only to not find it. You swallow, only now did you realize that the threaded cane in his hand was covered in blood. “Oh I see...this is but another dream. How fortunate,” the man chuckled eerily. "It would have been a shame for you to die for good."

You grip the handle of your saw cleaver as glimpses of past dreams you had so blissfully forgotten surface in your mind. You recall the sensation of the metal cane breaking your neck...the segmented blades tearing into your flesh.

The doctor's gaze focuses on the covering woman behind you.

“But where are my manners. I have a patient to attend to. You have my thanks for catching her. This sickness must not be allowed to spread,” He said gesturing towards the woman behind you who was clinging to your coat, silently begging you to save her. ”She is quite ill you see...and alas the only cure to her disease is death. It must be cut off before it can spread.”

”I am not sick.” the woman pleaded hopelessly. ”My child is waiting for me...Please I just want to return home and wait till the morning comes to us. That man is insane.”

”She does not look infected! There is not single signs of beastly curse on her body!” you yell at the plague doctor who just shakes his head in disapproval.

”This affliction runs deeper than that...you clearly do not yet have the insight to see the horrors that lie underneath and above us...I have to rid the world of this pestilence, else it will spread and contaminate everything like the cancer it is on the waking world.”

A horrible thought crossed your mind. Had this man killed all the people you had sent out to seek shelter from Oedon Chapel.

"What sort of doctor are you? A murderer....that's what you are. Just another insane beast that roams the streets!" You open your saw cleaver, ready to attack the doctor should he take a single step towards the woman whose child was awaiting for her return.

The man's eyes narrow dangerously behind his white mask as he stares you down.

"You'd stand between me and my patient?" He inquired quietly, tone calm yet threatening. Somehow you had a feeling this was what you had done previously.

"The health and fate of this whole city is on my shoulders. I will contain the pestilence, even if I have to resort to extreme measures. These deaths are a necessary evil, and no matter how unfortunate, I am willing to carry this burden. In time I will find a cure, yes, but for now I have no other options.”

"I will not let you kill this woman," you hiss. "She is healthy."

"Just how blind can you be. You'd doom her to a fate worse than death?!" the plague doctor demanded, losing his composure for a second, only to quickly calm down. He closed his eyes and shook his head lightly in disapproval. “You've not seen what I've seen...what horrors lie beyond the understanding of men.”

The plague doctor swung his threaded cane once to unlock the segmented blade whip. "Fear not my good hunter...no...my _**apprentice**_ , 'tis nothing we can't fix. I will open your eyes to the truth of this world."

You ready your saw cleaver.

”No matter how painful of a procedure it is.”

With that, the plague doctor lunged at you.

**You died.**

* * *

”Hello good hunter. Welcome home,” you hear the doll's gentle voice when you wake up in the hunter's dream once again, the memories of the waking...or was it dreaming world, starting to fade away slightly.

The bird masked doctor had dashed at you and with a single swing of the threaded cane he had ended your life. The segmented blade whip had coiled around your neck; a single yank enough to remove your head off your shoulders.

The previously so valiant hunter's headless corpse had fallen before the terrified woman whose child was awaiting for her return. That poor lonesome girl would wait in vain her mother again for she had become yet another patient for the deranged doctor who stalked Yharnam's night.

Your whole body trembles as you rise up onto your feet, fear having sunk its cold claws into your psyche. Knowing that the plague doctor was hunting down people he deemed sick with an illness that probably existed only in his own mind (and to which only remedy was death) made you run to the grave stone. You had to return to Yharnam fast, to protect its people from both beasts, hunters and this monster.

”May you find your worth in the waking world.”

It felt like you had entered a completely new nightmare.

The deranged plague doctor had become a shadow that stalked you through the streets of Yharnam and the pathways of the forests that surrounded the city, always just few steps behind; waiting and abiding his time, trying to kill or capture you the moment your guard was down. He was not going to let you escape his grasp and his obsession with you seemed to only grow as the night continued.

“What a capable hunter of beasts and men you are. The things I could achieve with your help. Together we'd be able to rid the world of the pestilence, I am certain of it.. I refuse to let such skill go to waste," he had told you during one of your deadly encounters with him.

He had cornered you in the forbidden woods surrounding the city, the vast woods drowning out all screams of pain and beastly howls.

"What wonderful dreams we could dream together, you and I. I will grant you eyes and make you see the horrors of this world..." he had murmured, brandishing the threaded doctor's cane in his hand, his eyes narrowing behind the mask due to the smile that reached his eyes as he gazed at deep into your eyes.

"No matter how many times it takes."

You had felt a cold steel scalpel get buried into your heart, into your eye and across your throat and arms. The threaded cane had crushed your skull, the whip's blades dismembering you or cutting you in half. The foreign doctor was becoming the hunter that hunted you and though you had managed to end his life few times, the monstrous doctor seemed to come back no matter what, wiser and more careful. He was like you, a dreamer who woke up in in Yharnam's night again and again.

"I still sense it in you, the connection to a dream. I do wonder...how long are they going to keep you bound to it? When will you no longer be useful to the master of that dream?” the plague doctor had mused. “I want you to wake up from that dream for good, so that you can partake in mine. I will bind you to it so that you'll never wake up."

The doctor had become a constant presence in your journey through the city...and each time you returned to the hunter's dream, you remembered him a bit better and with more clarity, like he was carving himself into your fading memory during each journey to Yharnam that resulted in your death.

 _Why can't this night end...._ you were so tired of it, of beasts, of men, of the old ones and their plots and the insane doctor who was obsessed with you. So many times you had wanted to give in to your bloodlust, to lose all humanity.

But despite all this, or perhaps because of it, you press on and endure. You'd see this night through to its end and meet the sun in the morning without becoming blood drunk. You refused to become a monster...even if you already had the old blood.

Would your transformation be inevitable? There was so little hope in this city.

Your journey through the night continues and you eventually find your way to the Moonside Lake and the Vacuous Spider that resided in its depths, hiding the truth of the world from your eyes and mind.

Upon her death, you had finally been able to see what the doctor had gazed up at in the graveyard; an amygdalae that clung to the buildings of Yharnam, listening to the desperate prayers of the people who pleaded the old ones to deliver them from this horrible night.

The sight of the long limbed monstrosities had raised so many questions in your mind about the man's mental state. Just how insane was he if he had been able to see them before the blood moon had even risen on the sky?

You had then braved the nightmare of Mensis, eventually killing Mergo's wet nurse and thus putting an end to that nightmare. The night had been nearly at its end, the daybreak just minutes away. You had returned to the hunter's dream one last time to accept your death there and allow Gehrman to sever your connection to the dream.

With the scythe to your neck, you find yourself in the waking world, the golden sun rising from beyond the horizon.

The night was finally over.

Though you cannot help but wonder, was the nightmare truly over for you?

* * *

The people of Yharnam were suspicious of all outsiders by default, and though they were still wary of you, they begrudgingly offered their thanks for your bravery and valiant actions during the night of the brutal hunt. Still, the whole city was still in a state of shock and the people just spent the day wandering the streets aimlessly, inspecting the damages the city had endured along with cleaning the countless corpses off the streets. The city of graves was going to have tons more graves soon enough.

As the sun marches across the sky, the hunter's dream quickly fades from your mind, as dreams usually do, though the doll's gentle and comforting voice still echoes in the depths of your mind. The night of the hunt now felt like a long continuous nightmare and the countless times you had ventured to the waking world collapse into a single timeline in your mind.

Even though the nightmare was behind you, you cannot shake off the feeling that you were still being followed through the streets...the shadows concealing whoever was following you. Though you had a pretty good idea of the person, after all he had carved himself into your mind in most brutal manner. Fear and anxiety start to creep into your mind as the shadows grow longer and longer.

Your dreams had been dreamt and the next death would be your final one.

The daylight begins to fade all too soon for your taste and the streets start to empty out of people who hurry back into their safe homes, leaving you to traverse through the evening all alone yet again. The stench of burning corpses of both men and beast permeated the air. There was so much cleaning to do in the city...would it ever recover? And even more horrible question lingered in your mind; would this night be just as long as the previous one?

As you walk through the alleyways of Yharnam, you can feel a familiar presence. The shadowy presence from your nightmare still lingered with you, reaching towards you with its claws, wanting to pull you back in, though this time it would be a different dream you'd be bound to.

The tall man in black robes and white mask....your encounters with him felt like fleeting nightmares now and a part of you wondered had they really happened or had those encounters been nothing but another nightmare? His soft voice still resonated in your mind, his promise of making you his apprentice.

You stop to look ever your shoulder, seeing nothing but the light of the street lanterns, but you had felt someone's presence close by. Very close.

 _Am I still dreaming things?_ You wondered before turning back to head into an alleyway to seek somewhere to rest. Even a hunter needed rest and you had a long day and night behind you. Eventually you come across an abandoned house, the residents long gone. You hesitate for a moment, but decide to head in. You started to feel too exhausted to continue your search for an inn that'd take you in.

“Is anyone here? I am a hunter looking for a shelter for tonight. May I sleep the night here?” you ask loudly at the door in case the residents were hiding inside the house. You step inside when no one answers your question.

_Guess no one will mind if I stay the night here. I better come up with a plan for tomorrow. I am not sure I want to stay a hunter after what I've witnessed._

The old floorboards creak softly underneath your weight as you you head up the stairs to make sure there were no beasts in the second storey. If the night had taught you one thing, it was that one could never be too careful. Greed and overconfidence had only gotten you killed.

You scour through the large and dark upper floor, only for your steps to come a sudden and complete stop when you hear another set of steps along with yours. They echo slightly in the darkness, making it hard for you to pinpoint their location. There was weight to those steps.

You were being hunted. You open your saw cleaver, ready to fight the grazed plague doctor despite knowing you'd no longer wake up to a dream. The only light source in the darkness was your small hand lantern that did little to push back the shadows.

You fail to notice how the black robed doctor with white bird mask quietly emerges from the shadows behind you. Unlike you, he did not need light to guide him through the darkness.

When you finally sense him behind you, it is little too late. He strikes at you like praying mantis, having no intentions of letting you escape or even fight back.

His right arm wraps tightly around you and he pulls you against his body, pinning your arms momentarily against your sides so that you could not cut him down with the saw cleaver. You see how your lantern's light reflects off the glass and metal syringe he was holding in his other hand.

”My my hunter....the night maybe long gone, but there is still another dream for you to dream with me,” with that, the strange doctor pushed the syringe into your neck, injecting whatever was inside the glass tube.

You manage to free yourself from the monster's hold and he quickly backs away, clearly willing to keep his distance as whatever he had given you coursed through your veins and did its deed. Surely enough, you soon found your grip on the saw cleaver starting to loosen and your left hand trembled as you tried to hold up your gun to shoot at the man. Your hand wavers and eye grows becomes blurry, making it impossible for you to aim. All the while the plague doctor circled around you like a carrion bird. You had no antidotes to counter whatever he had given you and your body was losing the fight.

There were battles you were not prepared for and this was one of them. You tried to flee the house by dashing the stairs down and towards the door, but the poison or drug was working too fast.

Your legs fail underneath you and you fall against the wall to try and support yourself up. You hear the doctor's foot steps following you and he descents the stairs down slowly, the creaking of the steps inflicting you with terror. He was not in any hurry, after all he knew his prey no longer had a dream to escape into. All he needed to do was wait for you to succumb to the drug.

 _Move damn it! I will not die here. Not to him after surviving the night!_ you tell your body, but it refuses to take a single step forward no matter how much you try to will it to. Your last strength escapes you and you finally slump down onto the damp floor. The world starts to fade away and the last thing you see before your mind falls into the oblivion are the plague doctor's boots and the end of the threaded cane.

“It seems your hunt has finally come to its end. I will grant you insight you still lack and then...then we can start our work.”

Your mind flickered in and out of unconsciousness and during those brief and rare moments of clarity you could feel yourself being dragged through the Yharnam's alleyways, the doctor's soles hitting the cobbled street as he took you towards whatever destination that awaited you. You could smell the blood, the grime and death in the air until your mind fully fell to unconsciousness.

There was no dreams to be had now, for the drug you had been injected with brought only oblivion to your mind.

* * *

A familiar melody pushes through to your unconscious mind, and though the soft yet ever so slightly creepy melody was meant to lull a young and growing mind to sleep....you hearken to it and follow it to the waking world. Your eyes open slowly and your eye lids feel so heavy, like it took all of your strength and willpower to just acknowledge the world around you. Your surroundings look hazy and disorienting and your blurry eye sight does little to help.

You hear the music box you had gained from the small girl in Yharnam playing somewhere in the darkness, the notes echoing eerily and forebodingly around you. The blissful and comforting ignorance that waking mind experiences starts to fade away as the music box's notes grow slower and slower until the the cylinder inside halts its movement altogether, the last note sounding almost dissonant.

You struggle and wade through the haze your mind was wrapped in, trying to study your surroundings while doing so. The first thing you realize when your eye sight focuses is that you were lying on a surgeon table, the cold metal frame dirty with dried blood. It looked like you were in one of the rooms of the clinic you had started your journey from, with only a single red hued lamp that was placed above you lighting the room.

Suddenly your mind is fully awake and alarmed and the memories prior to your capture flood in. You try to get off the metal table to make your escape, only to find out yo were bound to it with leather bindings running across your chest and legs, making it impossible to fight or even struggle. And if that wasn't bad enough, when you look down you see that most of your gear had been removed, leaving you with only your clothes on.

Though it was so very dark in the room, you could see the glimpse of yours saw cleaver in the corner along with the rest of your gear that was spread out and rummaged through. The walls were lined with shelves that carried all sort of large bottles and containers with only gods knew what inside.

You hear shuffling somewhere in the large operating room along with clinking of bottles. Your eyes peer into the darkness with your heart hammering against your chest. The doctor was there with you.

”Oh you are awake? My, I had hoped you'd sleep through the whole procedure. You must have developed quite a formidable resistance to poisons last night,” you hear the plague doctor's soft yet eerie voice in the darkness. "Worry not, for I am almost done with the preparations."

You try to look around from your bound position, only to see that your right arm's sleeve had been pulled up and that there was a tube leading to your arm with a glass container of liquid above you...just like when you had signed the contract upon coming to Yharnam. But you already had Yharnam's **special** blood in your veins. What was that madman planning?

You try to struggle against your bindings when the plague doctor steps into the dim light, but the deranged man had made sure his patient would not get away from him this time.

The masked man looks rather amused when you try to break free, the metal frame of the surgery table rattling loudly underneath you as you squirm and thrash violently in hopes of loosening the bindings. There was no one to help you, no one to hear your screams or yells. Isefka's clinic was empty, all patients and the doctor, both the real and impostor killed during the night.

The clinic had a new doctor now, one that would take good care of you.

"Now lets take a look at you," the strange doctor says as he grabs hold of your jaw, turning your head from side to side despite you baring your teeth at him like one of the beasts you had slain.

"Release me at once!" you growl at him despite your weakened state. The plague doctor just chuckles at your demand, sounding almost sinister. His grey eyes were narrowed behind his mask due to the smile. He was clearly enjoying this, after all he was finally able to tend to you.

"Now what good would that do? No...first we must open your eyes to the truth you cannot see."

He turns to a nearby table and when you realize just what you were looking at, your eyes widen in terror and your heart starts to race even faster. There was a line of blood vials on the table and the tubes and doctor's bag suggested that the doctor himself had so very generously donated the blood.

”Yharnam is not the only place that ministers blood...sharing blood can be very insightful experience, intimate even,” the fellow foreigner explained as he picked up one of the vials, eyeing it for a moment, thumb running across the glass. "This is a slow and delicate procedure and it will take all night to infuse your blood with mine. But not to worry, you'll be all better in the morning."

Your struggling grows only more desperate when the plague doctor slowly turns to you once more. This night was starting exactly the same as the one before it, but this time the servitude was forced upon you. There was no contracts to be made.

“No...no no no...” you whisper as the plague doctor towers over you, his expression at the same time both gentle and sinister. “I...I don't want this. I don't want your blood.”

“But how else would you get better?” the man inquire, opening the bottle. You saw it now, the dark, almost viscous looking blood inside. It was not blood of any man. “I told you I'd open your eyes.”

Your heart skips a beat when you see the plague doctor pouring the contents of the vial into the blood infusing device, the dark liquid mixing with the chemical inside.

 _I want to wake up from his nightmare. Please, someone let me wake up. Anyone,_ But you were no longer dreaming even if it felt like it. Pure and paralyzing despair overwhelms you as you watch the blood start to slowly run down the tube, ready to enter your bloodstream.

The plague doctor turns from you again to pick up the small music box off the table next to the line of blood vials that would all be run into you. He winds up the box with a key inside.

The creepy lullaby starts anew, ready to lull you back to sleep as the doctor takes care of you through the night; giving you dose after dose of his own blood until your body would be thoroughly contaminated by it.

Something inside you snaps when you see the blood enter your body.

"No!! Let me go!" you yell and thrash violently from side to side, trying to desperately get the tube off your arm and end this procedure, but your efforts are for naught. You quickly exhaust yourself completely. The long night of hunting, the drugging along with the sheer mental and emotional strain you had experience had left you so empty and weak. Your body and mind were at their limit.

A cry, or rather a whimper of desperation escapes your lips as you go limp and all you are able to do is watch helplessly as the blood is transferred to your body. You just lie there, breathing rapidly like a wounded animal, heart filled to the brink with desperation as you watch and experience helplessly whatever the doctor wanted to do with you.

You'd no longer wake to the hunter's dream, for you had been released from it. Soon a completely new and unknown dream would claim you...one you'd never wake up from. The melody of mergo's lullaby continues soothing your mind that was ablaze. Fate was so very cruel. You had fought through that horrible night, trying to help so many, to guide them to safety...only to be taken by the plague doctor. You plead in your mind for someone to deliver you from this fate, but the old ones did not heed your prayers.

”Old ones, grant us eyes so we'd see the affliction that tries to hide itself from this world,” the plague doctor said as he sat down beside your bed to watch over his patient. He closed his eyes and brought his hands together. “May we return to your dream so that no death shall hinder us. Grant us eyes...grant us insight, so that we can see that which afflicts this world...so that we can cure it, so that we can eradicate it and burn it away.”

* * *

The road leading to Yharnam had been a long one, but the one leading from it seemed even longer, endless even.

You follow the plague doctor whose companionship was the only one you had. Everything you came across seemed to now be afflicted with a sickness you still could not understand, but of which presence felt repulsive to you.

 _Why did you curse me with this knowledge? This madness,_ you wonder as you follow him. Your fate felt so bitter, and that bitterness was slowly turning into a poison in your soul.

Each passing day the world seemed to slip more and more between that of the waking and dreaming world and at times you were no longer sure where you were any more. You were losing your grip on reality. All you knew was that you'd follow the man who had shared his blood with you to whatever dream he'd dream.

You find yourself stopping for a moment to gaze at the small village that looms in the horizon. It would be your next stop and you dreaded to see what awaited you there. The sun was already heading towards the horizon, its last rays casting long shadows behind you and the doctor as you walked towards the village. It would already be night by the time you two reached it.

The plague doctor stops when he hears the steps behind him cease and turns to look at you. The cold autumn wind blows through the forest, scattering leaves across the cobbled street, yet you no longer feel the cold on your skin.

“Hurry now, we should not be as cruel as to let the good and suffering people wait for us. Wouldn't you agree? There is much work to do, much indeed. So many cities and towns to visit before we can find and perfect the cure.”

With an soft and low chuckle the plague doctor heads down the road lined with lanterns and despite wanting to run away, you follow him.

After all, what other choice did you have?

Your fates had coiled around one another, never to be separated. Your dreams were no longer your dreams but his. Even if you tried to run, which you had many times, you always woke by his side, the nightmare continuing no matter what you tried. There was no escape for you.

You hurry forward and catch up with the plague doctor whose blood now coursed through your veins.

He chuckled softly, pleased to see you by his side.

“You and I will dream a lifetime together.”

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is one of my strangest fanfics. I know music box had a crank in the game but I decided to change it to one that could be wind up.  
> Also I realized there is an error with the pacing. You'd have to have killed father Gascoigne to access Oedon chapel. So how does the hunter know about its location if they haven't killed him yet...aaaargh.


End file.
